be terrified by a
feeling of immense guilt, ready to be told what to do to make amends.

It was up to him to be the one who did the telling. If, at the same
time, he could get his hands on one of the learning capsules--the
prospect was so dazzling it left him breathless.

He slipped out to the boys' workshop back of the garage. When he knocked
on the door, Donald opened it two inches and quickly tried to close it
again. But Elvin thrust his hand over the latch.

"No, Donald," he said sternly. "This time you don't get away with it.
You see, I know what happened when you ate the spheres."

The door creaked open. Elvin walked into the workshop, where all thirty
of the tenth graders were gathered around the littered work table. The
rocket was there, and they were studying the tiny motor. In a corner was
a hastily constructed forge; three girls were working with it, turning
out curved strips of metal, which a boy was machining on the metal
lathe. In the center of the shop was a tall, gleaming bar of metal,
surrounded by a network of wires and fastened to a wooden base made from
an orange crate.

"You're cooking up some more surprises for us?" Elvin asked.

"No," Donald replied solemnly. "We're ashamed of--"

"As, indeed, you should be."

"We're doing our best to put everything back the way it was," Mabel
Travis said. "Honestly, Mr. Elvin."

"It won't help much; the damage is already done."

"But it can be undone. We've already fixed up part of it."

"Yes," David Schermerhorn cut in anxiously. "When Don and I came back
this morning, the first thing we did was bring back the bank. Our
machine's kind of crude, Mr. Elvin, so we couldn't get it right at
first. I guess we picked up a castle or something in between; but that's
all right, now. And the gold--well, we're going to turn it back to
gravel again tonight." He gestured toward the bar of metal.

"We can work from the edge of our field," David pointed out. "The whole
desert will change at once, the way it did last night."

"And what will you do with all the people on it?"

"It won't hurt them."

"But when they find their gold is gravel, you'll have a major
catastrophe on your hands."

Marilyn bit her lip. "That's why we haven't done anything yet. We don't
want anybody to get hurt but--"

"So you've considered that at last." The more Elvin rubbed in the guilt,
he reasoned, the more secure he would make himself.

"We could just transpose the whole area," C